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WASHINGTON AND OUR FORE-FATHERS 

MADE DEMOCRACY SAFE FORTHE 

WORLD, NOT THE WORLD SAFE 

FOR DEMOCRACY 

AN ADDRESS BY 

EDWARD CASPER STOKES 

BEFORE 

THE WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION 
OF NEW JERSEY 

With Greeting by ALFRED El.MER MILLS, Tresident 
and Proceedings in the Celebration 

AT WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS 

IN MORRISTOWN, N. | 



ON FEBRUARY 22, 1919 



#f % 



e: 51^ 



ADDRESSES 

Before the Members of the 
WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION OF NEW JERSEY 



At Headquarters, Morristown, New Jersev. 
February 22, 19 19. 

President Alfred Elmer Mills called the assembly to 
order. 

All present stood at attention while the orchestra 
played "The Star Spangled Banner." 

The national anthem, "America," was then sung by 
all. . 

President Mills said: 

Gentlemen of the Washington Association. The joys 
and sorrows of another year have passed. Once more we 
meet on this historic spot and once more I give you a 
most cordial welcome. 

You see but little change in your surroundings. 
Through the gifts of generous friends valuable additions 
have been made to our collection of paintings and relics, but 
the old home remains the same. If Washington could 
return after nearly one hundred and forty years he would 
at once recognize his old headquarters. It is we who 
change. Our lives, our friends, our country, all have 
changed during the past eventful year. Death has wrung 
the hearts of all of us. It has removed our beloved Treas- 
urer, Mr. John H. Bonsall, who for many years gave his 
devoted services to our Association. It has taken many 

3 



of our most valued members. It has laid low tens of thou- 
sands of our best and bravest on the battlefields of France. 

Our boys have not died in vain, for to them we owe 
the victory that has crowned the allied arms. (Applause.) 

On the nth of November last, the little town of Senlis 
in Northern France witnessed the supreme triumph of the 
democratic nations of the world. The signing of the 
armistice by the representatives of Germany marked the 
overthrow of the Autocrat. Imperialism had succumbed 
to Democracy. A civilization based upon the greatest 
amount of individual freedom, had conquered one 
of socialistic formation ruled by a group of imperialistic 
leaders. The German with his curious combination of 
socialism and imperialism had fallen before gallant France, 
backed by Britain and America — the most individual- 
istic of the nations — who, with their unlimited resources 
had sprung to her support. Right had prevailed. Wash- 
ington's debt — our debt — to Lafayette had been repaid, and 
the waves of militarism and barbarism had been driven 
back. 

The world is in suspense today lest the victories that 
our armies have won may prove of no avail through the 
Bolshevists and Anarchists who are trying to impose a 
despotism far worse than that of a Kaiser or a Czar. 

Is personal initiative to be stifled? Is class conscious- 
ness to control? Is that mean and contemptible spirit of 
Caste that has cursed the peoples of the old world to replace 
the glorious freedom that has released the boundless 
energies of America? 

These are questions that must be answered not by 
boys in khaki, but by you and me, by every thinking man. 
The responsibility is upon us. 

One of the foremost thinkers on these great problems 
is with us today. He will speak to us on the subject, 
"Washington and Our Forefathers Made Democracy Safe 
for the World — Not the World Safe for Democracy." 

I take great pleasure in calling on our old friend. 
Governor Stokes. (Applause.) 

4 



WASHINGTON AND OUR FORE-FATHERS MADE 

DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE WORLD, NOT 

THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 



An Address Delivered bv Edward Caspar Stokes before the 

Washington Association of New Jersey 

ON February 22, 1919. 

MR. STOKES— Mr. President and Fellow Americans: 

It is far from good form to begin an address with an 
apology. But in this case it at least has the merit of truth, 
and truth ought to be permissible on the anniversary of 
the cutting down of the cherry tree. (Laughter.) My 
apology is that this is my first visit to this historic spot 
so full of patriotic associations. Washington never said 
anything to me about it. My absence probably entirely 
escaped his notice, or it may be that he was entirely satis- 
fied with the fact that for three years I had the honor of 
signing the appropriation to aid in the maintenance of this 
organization. At any rate, my visit here gives me a nev.' 
phase of Washington's character. Added to his other 
illustrious characteristics, I now know that he was a 
connoisseur in the selection of the right place to live and 
he knew how to pick out a home. (Applause.) Although 
it is my first visit, I come with the greatest pleasure, and 
I should be guilty of lack of appreciation if I failed to 
acknowledge the compliment I feel in being able to be the 
guest of this honored Association and of this distinguished 
gathering. 

Any anniversary occasion is always full of suggestions. 
It sharply contrasts the past with the present, and it marks 

5 



6 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

the deviations, if any there be, from the highways of our 
forefathers. The Father of His Country, in his farewell 
address, that manual of sound Americanism and sound 
patriotism, advised that this land of ours should hold aloof 
from foreign entanglements. That was his attitude. 

How different the attitude of the present Chief Execu- 
tive, who personally visits European fields, suggests policies 
to those nations, recommends for'ms of government, and 
advises an American partnership in a league of European 
and world problems and difficulties ! 

Was the Father of His Country altogether wrong in 
his policy of minding our own business? Is our present 
distinguished Chief Executive altogether right in the policy 
of mingling in the business of other nations? 

To a judicial mind, and all minds should be judicial on 
an anniversary occasion, free from bias and prejudice, the 
great contrariety between the attitude of the Father of His 
Country and the distinguished chief who now guides the 
destinies of this Republic, ought to suggest careful con- 
sideration and deliberation on the proposed innvoations of 
the day. 

For example, peace between the mother country and 
the colonies was signed in 1783. It was not until 1790 that 
Rhode Island ratified the Constitution. The thirteen col- 
onies fought a common war. Their interests were largely 
identical, their conception of liberty and ideals the same, 
their racial characteristics so near alike as not to interfere 
with practical homogeneity, they were geographically con- 
tiguous, and their whole safety lay in the unity of action, 
and yet those thirteen colonies, so bound together in com- 
mon interest, deliberated and debated and considered for 
seven years before they form.ed a safe league of nations. 

Some of the questions in the boiling pot of Europe 
have been simmering for six thousand years, many of them 
for at least two thousand years. Never were there so many 
questions to be settled ; never were suspicions so subtly 
keen ; never were ambitions so whetted by opportunity ; 
never were antagonisms so real, and yet some of our en- 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES V 

thusiastic friends expect us to form a safe and sane league 
of nations for the whole world within a twelvemonth. 

This hasty idealism of the d^y makes us wonder if 
some modern Phaethon is not wildly driving the chariot 
of the sun. At least, the patriotic student of history, with 
the caution of Webster in his opening remark in his reply 
to Hayne, wants to take his bearing before he steers into 
the open sea. 

A nation is the sum total of its traditions and its ex- 
periences. They are our guides and our sign posts. The 
pioneers who blazed the way are held up to acclamation or 
derision, just in proportion as the pathway they laid out 
led to the comfort or misery of those who follow after. 

Our present is not of our own making ; it is the legacy 
of the past. We owe much to the past. Our religion, our 
Bible, our Ten Commandtnents, our Independence, and our 
Fourth of July, all come from the past. The lessons of the 
past are more pregnant than those of the present, because, 
as Patrick Henry said, "There is no way to judge the 
future but by the lamp of experience." 

The success of this government is due to the wisdom 
of those who founded it, and not to the guess of those who 
would change it. The wisdom and judgment of those who 
founded it have been tried and proven. The guess of those 
who would change it is uncertain and problematical. Nay, 
it is uncertain? Are there no precedents even here? 

The Constitution of the French Republic of 1848 con- 
tained practically every nostrum advocated by the radicals 
of today. And I have in my possession a political platform 
of one of the parties of that day, which in its plea for gov- 
ernment ownership of railroads and canals and mines, and 
compensation to citizens for accidents, floods, fire, etc., 
whatever that may mean, and other measures, reads prac- 
tically word for word like the propaganda of the radicals 
of this hour. And yet that republic so organized and so 
established fell to pieces of its own weight in four years, 
and ended in monarchy and the coup d'etat of Louis 
Napoleon in 1852. 



8 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

The genesis of our land differed from all the nations. 
Most nations were conceived either in war or in hunger 
settled by tribes who were pushed on from behind by their 
foes, or by those who were seeking new and fertile fields 
for food. That is true of modern Italy, overrun by barbar- 
ians ; true of Germany, settled by the Teuton ; true of 
France, settled by the Celts ; true of England, conquered 
first by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes and later by the North- 
men. Not so America. Our land was settled not by un- 
thinking adventurers, but by educated men. Robinson 
and Brewster, who led the Pilgrim fathers to Amsterdam, 
were university graduates ; Roger Williams, the first to 
declare for religious freedom and for separation of church 
and state, was a son of English Cambridge. The dissolu- 
tion of Parliament by Charles sent to Massachusetts, the Bay 
Colony, an influx of brains and scholarship whose char- 
acter is indicated by the fact that nearly all the clergy of 
that day, including John Harvard, John Cotton, Thomas 
Shepherd and Thomas Hooker were college graduates. 

So scholarly were our forefathers that they were lead- 
ers on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of them held high 
rank in the military service; some of them held high posi- 
tions in the civil service of the Protectorate. Twelve of 
the first twenty graduates of Harvard went back to Eng- 
land to aid in the cause of liberty. And it is not too much 
to say, although it might seem a little like boasting, and 
we have a right to boast today, it is not too much to say that 
Payne and Cromwell and Sidney, Hampden and Milton, 
those disciples of English liberty, were the scholars of 
teachers on this side of the Atlantic. John Adam,s, Samuel 
Adams, James Otis, glorious names in American history, 
were sons of old Harvard. 

This Republic of ours was founded by educated men, 
and men of character. Of the fifty-five members of the 
Constitutional Convention, thirty-three were college grad- 
uates, and the eight leaders of the great debates were all 
college men. And when that Convention adjourned, it was 
Hamilton, a son of Columbia, who induced New York to 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 9 

join the union of states, and it was Madison, a son of our 
own Princeton, who in spite of the firm protest of Patrick 
Henry, placed Virginia by her side. 

America, perhaps, at that time was the land of the 
brainest men of the world. 

The dissolution of Parliament by Charles, to which I 
have referred, gave us that influx of scholarship. When 
the Protectorate was established, there came here the 
Cavalier, hating democracy and loving his king, but a 
man of courage, culture and daring. At the restoration, 
supposed to be peaceful, but a restoration of confiscation, 
we fell heir to another influx of fine culture, brains and 
brawn. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes gave us 
another contribution, that fine strain of the Huguenot. 
Add to that the Quakers, with statesmen like Penn and 
the Knickerbockers of Manhattan that came from Holland, 
that land of liberty, and the common school, and it is no 
exaggeration to say, my friends, that at that time America 
was the home of the finest characters and the finest scholar- 
ship in the world. It was these men who made our democ- 
racy what it is. It was these men who made democracy 
safe, and with this fact in mind is it wise to forget in this 
hour all the lessons, all the advice, all the experience of 
ancestors so wise, in this period of reformation after civili- 
zation has been saved, a victory to which you, Mr. Presi- 
dent, so eloquently referred. 

In the work, I think they call it, of reconstruction, is 
it not well to remember, that innovation is not always 
reform, and that this country of ours has som« principles 
and assets worthy of preservation without change? (Ap- 
plause.) 

The policies that have made our land a land of more 
freedom, of more happiness, of more privilege, of more 
opportunity for the lowly than any other land on earth, 
must have some good in them. Our constitution after a 
hundred years of trial was declared by Gladstone and 
Bryce to be the greatest instrument ever emanating from 
the brains of men. It sufficed for three millions of people 



10 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

along the Atlantic seaboard. It sufBces today for a hun- 
dred millions scattered over the continent's expanse — even 
— even further than that, for it reaches from sunrise to 
sunset. It has been equally good in peace or war. It en- 
abled us to double our territory by the purchase of Louisi- 
ana, and to write the marvelous story of our growth, re- 
ligious, educational, industrial and material. And it has 
stood the test of this progress and vicissitude for one hun- 
dred and thirty years with only four fundamental changes 
— only four fundamental changes necessary to be added to 
the wisdom of our fathers in a journey of one hundred and 
thirty years. 

And yet today, or until recently, for one has now been 
adopted, there have been pending at one and the same 
time four proposed amendments, some of them mere police 
regulations that never ought to be written into the organic 
law of our country. Every patriot should hesitate before 
he allows the spirit of change to lay violent hands upon 
an instrument that has proven so useful and efficient. 

Moreover, my friends, the demand for change does 
not come from the men who fought our battles. They 
want to return to the old conditions they left. They want 
to come back to the same mother and the same father and 
the same wife and the same children and the same old home 
they left behind, just as when you revisit your boyhood 
scenes you want to find them just as when you played 
among them. 

Our heroes abroad want none of this Bolsheviki and 
socialistic failure they have witnessed on the soil of Europe. 
(Applause.) They are homesick not for new but for the 
old conditions, and we have no right in their absence, with- 
out any opportunity upon their part, either to vote or ex- 
press opinion, to change this land of ours from one of indi- 
vidual freedom and initiative to a paternal and socialistic 
government of autocratic control of business enterprise. 
(Applause.) 

The great factor in America's greatness, as you 
suggested, Mr. President, has been the individual and his 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 11 

freedom, just as it was when Greece was great, or when 
Rome was mighty. 

In our patriotic personification of government, we are 
often misled into thinking that government is an entity and 
a personalty, and we forget it was individuals who framed 
and made it. We are a queer set of reformers. Just as 
soon as we give up one vice we become addicted to another. 
(Laughter.) 

Just now, you know, we have got the fashion of giving 
up drink, but we are taking to phrasing. (Laughter.) And 
we are lost in phrases. Nobody ever analyzes them, no- 
body ever thinks what they mean. That is too much work. 
"Making the world safe for democracy" is a beautiful 
phrase, but there isn't a man here who knows what it 
means. (Laughter.) and no man ever did. Making democ- 
racy safe for the world is the real problem. (Applause.) 

Democracy is not safe for anything unless you make 
it so. Democracy is not a virtue. It is the result of a 
virtue. It is the outcome of brains and character. Democ- 
racy has not made Russia safe. If all reports are true, and 
they are well authenticated, in that land religion is over- 
thrown, the family life destroyed, and all women froin 
seventeen years of age upwards, either married or single, 
have become the corrtmon property of the state, a form of 
state ownership and state control that have made degener- 
ates and animals out of men, a most horrible condition of 
infamy. Why, because the Bolsheviki have not made 
democracy safe. Democracy never made America safe. It 
was American brains and character that made free govern- 
ment and democracy in our land possible. (Applause.) 

I referred to the character of our ancestors. By the 
common consent of historians, the members of the second 
Continental Congress were the finest body of minds ever 
gathered together in the history of the world in deliberative 
assembly. Take old Virginia as an illustration. George 
Washington, the Father of His Country; Richard Henry 
Lee, who moved that the colonies should be free and in- 
dependent; Patrick Henry, whose "Liberty or Death" has 



12 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

been mouthed by every school boy; Mason, the author o£ 
the bill of rights; Jefferson, the author of the Declaration 
Madison, the father of the Constitution ; Marshall, the first 
Chief Justice, who breathed into it virility and vitality; 
Monroe, the author of the doctrine that no European mon- 
archial flag should find permanent lodgment on the soil of 
the western hemisphere — all these lived at one and the same 
time in a single one of the thirteen colonies. (Applause.) 

The age of an Augustus or Pericles produced no such 
galaxy of great names. Add to these the Hamiltons and 
Clintons of New York, the Adamses and the Otises of 
Massachusetts, the Wilsons and Franklins of Pennsylvania, 
the Rutledges and Gasdens of the Carolinas. It was these 
men and their contemporaries that made our government 
what it is. The government did not make these men. 
Government is the result, not the cause of individual achieve- 
ment and effort. 

Civilization if it is to survive must develop individuals. 
Religion and art and science, philosophy and trade and com- 
merce and transportation and business, the children of 
civilization, are the result not of collective but of indi- 
vidual effort. 

You may have looked upon some magnificent painting, 
like that of the Sistine Madonna. An individual painted 
that picture. The masses never painted a picture. You 
may have gazed enraptured upon some beautiful statue. 
An individual like a Phidias carved that statue. The masses 
never carves a statue. You may have sat enthralled under 
some thrilling oration. An individual delivered that ora- 
tion. The masses never made an oration. The masses 
never invented a machine or framed a statue, or penned a 
poem, or shaped a cathedral, or discovered a law of gravi- 
tation. It is individuals who take these steps of progress 
alone, and the whole story of social development in this 
world has been the struggle of the individual to break 
through the procrustean bed of governmental direction and 
control. 

Greece was great so long as she was an individual, and 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 13 

she failed when she became sociaHstic. Rome v/as mighty 
so long as she was composed of an aggregate of local activ- 
ities, but the empire decayed when a centralized govern- 
ment becaime the business umpire of her people. 

The free cities of the middle ages and the feudal sys- 
tem dwelt side by side, but it was the burghers of the free 
cities who were the pioneers in business, outstripping 
the stagnant life of their feudal neighbors, ruled over by 
some governmental overlord. 

The Renaissance, known to every student of history, 
was nothing more nor less than the protest of the indi- 
vidual against governmental anci ecclesiastical direction of life, 
and when the Renaissance came the world awoke, the dark 
ages ceased and progress began, and like stars out of the 
firmament of the night, there came a Guttenberg with his 
printing press, an Erasmus, with his new learning, a 
Columbus to chart the seas, a Galileo and Copernicus to 
unfold the heavens, a Raphael and Angelo to charm with 
art, a Newton to weigh the planets in their courses, and 
later a Shakespeare to dramatize the virtues and weaknesses 
of the age. 

Within three hundred years from the outbreak of this 
individualism, the individuals to whom I have referred, sat 
in the city of Philadelphia and framed a government, deriv- 
ing its just powers from the consent of the governed. 
(Applause.) 

We have just finished a war between these two ideas, 
and that is all this war was, nothing more, nothing less; 
between the two ideas of the individual on one hand and 
government control on the other; between two ideas which 
Abraham Lincoln declared had always been in conflict since 
the dawn of history, the right of the individual to carve out 
his own destiny, and the effort of the government to con- 
trol it. 

I place Germany and America in illustrative contrast: 

Germany, government owned and government controlled, 

ninety-two per cent, of her railroads government owned, 

her telephones and telegraph lines likewise, her banks, 



14 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

government agents, her business and industries either in 
government partnership or under the government thumb, 
producing the finest industrial organization the world ever 
saw, with the most scientific war machine ever known in 
history, but a paternal rule that made her people mere 
working machines, barbaric and soulless. 

I turn now to America. Her telephones and telegraphs 
and roalroadsand business enterprises not government owned, 
but individual in ownership and effort. If her policy did not 
produce as efficient workers as that of Germany, it did 
produce real men and women, fine characters, recognizing 
their obligations to their fellowmen. (Applause.) 

And when the scientific war machine of that govern- 
ment owned and government controlled empire of Germany 
met the unfettered individualism of Am/erica on the field, 
the Gertnan machine went down in defeat, and individual 
America triumphed. (Applause.) 

The one unanswerable argument of the world against 
government ownership and state socialism is the verdict of 
the European battlefields in favor of the American flag. 
(Applause.) 

And yet, my friends, you know, there are some that 
honestly advise that we revise the policy of individual 
freedom that has made us great, and adopt the policy of 
Germany which we have denounced as barbaric and un- 
civilized. They are honest in that, but they forgot. They 
forgot that it is brains and not things that make wealth. 

You know we are very apt to follow in the pathway of 
the fellow who has gone before without thinking, and 
there is a lot of political economy accepted in this world 
in some of our schools that is not orthodox. 

Now, there isn't any such thing as intrinsic wealth in 
any true political economy, or intrinsic value, if you want 
to call it. There isn't any intrinsic value in this building. 
There isn't any wealth or value in any of your buildings or 
industries, your houses and lands and lots in Morristown. 
The wealth lies in the brains of your citizens and these 
other things are only their tools and instrumients, and if 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 15 

all of your citizens should leave Morristown today and 
none should ever return to take their place, Morristown as 
a deserted community would be absolutely valueless, un- 
worthy even of the attention of the tax collector. 

Why? Because its wealth would depart with the brains 
of its citizens. Why, this land of ours with its mines of 
copper and gold and silver, wonderful forests, water falls 
and fertile fields, was here for centuries, but they remained 
a wilderness and waste in the hands of the Indians. But 
when God sent over that little cargo of brains in the May- 
flower, they turned the wilderness into a garden and the 
waste into sources of wealth. It was the brains of the 
human cargo of the Mayflower, the Susane Constant and 
the Half-Moon and their descendants that made our pros- 
perity and progress. That is a kind of thing that makes 
our democracy safe. 

Jefferson purchased the whole of Louisiana, stretching 
from the Mississippi nearly to the Pacific for less than two 
cents an acre. The victorious Union soldiers went out 
there and settled it under the homestead act, and today 
this waste that Jefferson purchased turns out annually 
over ten billions of dollars in the form of harvests ; it feeds 
one-third of the people of the world, and it furnished the 
food and sustenance that enabled the allies to win the 
war. 

It was not government ownership of the land that did 
that. It was brains and character and intelligence of the 
farmer settlers that turned that desert of Jefferson into the 
granery of the world. It was not artificial fertilizer and 
potash that fertilized those fields. It was the brains of 
the individuals who lived there that fertilized that desert 
and made it blossom like a rose. 

That nation progresses most that permits the unfet- 
tered development of its brains, the real source of wealth: 
and that nation progresses least whose government usurps 
the activities of business and trade and commerce, and 
reduces its citizens to the dead level of bureaucratic em- 
ployes. 



16 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

I have been at the head of one of these bureaucratic 
departments and I know something about it, and my 
friend Salmon is going to take the place. After he has been 
there awhile he will make just the same kind of a speech on 
this subject that I am making. Now, if there is anything 
more pitiful or more withering to the intellect than a posi- 
tion in one of the bureaucratic departments, God save us. 
I don't want to seem to be cheap or to use cheap expres- 
sions, but I am only using it to be forceful when I say 
when I was there I used to fire the young men out of that 
office into the business world before their brains dried up. 
(Laughter and applause.) 

This question of government control is mental and 
psychological as well as economic. You don't find a Morse, 
— I believe he used to work up here in Morristown, didn't 
he? You don't find a Morse or an Edison, or a Wright or 
a Holland, in a government laboratory. You never de- 
veloped a sleeping car under governmental ownership of 
railroads. We had sleeping cars in this country thirty- 
five years before the Midland road of England announced 
through its managers with great gusto that they had formed 
a contract with an American individual by the name of 
Pullman and that thereafter they would be able to render 
that service to their people. 

Just before he left for Europe, President Wilson ap- 
peared before Congress for a few words of advice. (Laugh- 
ter.) He has that habit. (Laughter.) He drops in occasion- 
ally upon Congress for a cup of afternoon tea, and as a 
rule when he leaves Congress has the tea and he has Con- 
gress. (Laughter.) In the course of his remarks on this 
occasion he said, "The American people do not need to be 
coached or led. They know their own business." "They 
know their own business." Any leading strings that we 
might seek to put upon them would speedily become hope- 
lessly entangled, because they would pay no attention to 
them and go their own way." The American business man is 
resourceful and has initiative. That splendid statesmanlike 
utterance of President Wilson, if it means anything, means 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 17 

that government interference with business ought to for- 
ever cease. (Applause.) And as President Wilson spoke 
he was a splendid illustration himself of the individualism 
that he was then portraying. Can you think of Woodrow 
Wilson under government or even congressional control? 
(Laughter.) Has not his whole plea been to give him 
power and freedom from government red tape that he 
might be able more quickly to solve the problem of the 
war? 

Now, if you can trust your President of the United 
States free from control and restraint to solve the problems of 
a great war, you can trust the businessmen of America just as 
honest as your President and just as capable in their line 
to solve their own problems and naanage their own busi- 
ness. (Applause.) 

Washington founded this government ; Lincoln saved 
it, and Wilson is spreading the doctrines to the world, and 
his one continuous plea is that the people of Europe shall 
have freedom and immunity from the governmental control 
and restraint under which they have lived for centuries. 
(Applause.) 

Are not the American people entitled to the same 
thing? (Applause.) Why fetter the American business 
man with a system which every step in the progress of the 
world has condemned as inefficient and wrong? One illus- 
tration will suffice. It is a splendid tribute to the efficiency, 
enterprise and capacity of American citizenship. It was 
individual enterprise that pioneered the great railway 
lines of our country. These railroad pioneers blazed a new 
way over the trackless plains and through the forests, and 
they added millions to the wealth of the country in the 
newly opened mines, the villages and cities and industries 
that sprung up along the way at their touch. They did 
this great work on an average capitalization of $60,000 
per mile, as against $109,000 in Germany, $139,000 in 
France, $275,000 in Great Britain. They paid the highest 
wages ever paid in the world, and on the whole they 
charsed the lowest traffic rates in the world and with a 



IS ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

capitalization of only one-third of the average capitaliza- 
tion of the three countries I have named. They carried 
over these lines a traffic density double that of the govern- 
ment owned roads of Europe. In the parallel between the 
government owned roads of Europe and the individual 
owned roads of America, almost in any aspect of the ques- 
tion, the individualism of America beats governiment 
ownership two to one. 

The other night I heard a great speech by a Democrat. 
I always like to quote a Democrat. It warms the cockles 
of my heart to quote a Deimocrat, because I never quote 
him unless he is right. Whenever I quote a Democrat I 
realize just how the father of the prodical son felt when he 
fell on the neck of his boy and wept on his return. (Laugh- 
ter.) This Democrat was Congressman Small of North 
Carolina, chairman of the Rivers and Harbors Committee. 
He is a real statesman. These are some of the things he 
said: 

"The history of the world shows that the danger to a 
republic is the tendency toward centralization. The more 
power you delegate to the federal government the more 
you enervate the citizen, and the less opportunity and 
power you give him to control his government. The more 
responsibilities you impose upon him, the more patriotic 
you make him, and the more patriotic you make him the 
safer you make democracy." Continuing he said, "I am 
pleased to say that in the war period there were no Demo- 
crats or no Republicans ; the great Republican party united 
with the Democratic party in enacting any legislation and 
making any sacrifice necessary for a glorious victory, but 
in doing those things necessary for the winning of the war 
we very greatly curtailed the rights of individuals and be- 
stowed autocratic powers upon their official representatives. 
I have no hesitation in stating that I heartily approve that 
sentiment, that as soon as practicable those powers should 
be withdrawn and restored to the people." (Applause.) 
I am not saying this, Congressman Small, a Democrat, is 
saying it. (Laughter.) 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 19 

He is not through yet. ''When we restore their rights 
to the owners, we ought not to hesitate to enact such legis- 
lation as will make our great instrumentalities of transpor- 
tation more valuable to commerce and the welfare' of the 
country without in any wise doing injustice or injuring 
those who have invested their moneys in these enterprises."' 
Having taken the railroads over he said, under the pretext 
of war for purposes of government ownership, we have no 
right in operating them to so scramble them that we can- 
not unscramble them without rendering injustice to their 
owners. (Applause.) "Having taken them over," he is 
still speaking, lend me your ears a moment, "having taken 
over the telephone and telegraph wires under the pretext of 
war, we have no right to use that as an excuse for taking 
them away from their rightful owners and handing them 
over to a centralized government." (Applause.) 

Those statesmanlike utterances of Congressman Small 
at once dispose effectively of the irresponsible suggestion 
that these properties be handed back to their owners bank- 
rupt. Such a suggestion so shocks the sense of common 
honesty that it need not be discussed before this body. No 
decent government could afford to perpetrate that travesty 
on financial morals. 

The railroads of this country are its great highways of 
trade and commerce ; they are international highways ; they 
are a proper subject for government co-operation, that they 
may be justly dealt with and deal justly with all. 

They are not owned by a few people. They are owned 
directly and indirectly by fifty millions of our citizens, and 
those fifty millions of people have a just right to have 
honest and fair return upon their investment. 

The public, if there is a distinction between fifty 
millions American people and the public, and I don't think 
there is, the public has the right to have the railroads have 
remunerative rates that they may render prompt and effici- 
ent service. The whole country has a right to have the 
railroads have remunerative rates that additional capital 
may be attracted for development and that new places may 



20 ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 

be opened for abiding places for future generations of 
Americans yet to come, and that is what will make a con- 
tented and safer den^dcracy. 

Now, government ownership, socialism, just as you 
suggested, Mr. President, is a menace to democracy. I am 
not sure that it does not mean the end of delmocracy. It is 
autocracy enthroned and under it the goods of a merchant 
or a business man who might be out of political accord 
with the administration that happened then to be in power 
could be delayed and hampered in shipment. The news 
papers that criticized the administration then in power 
could be lost on the way to their readers, and in the hands 
of a fourth-rate politician that power could so enslave the 
people of this country that they would only dare obey like 
unto that which made the civilization of Germany a men- 
ace to the world. 

We believe in the rule of the people. If people are 
competent to run their own government, they are certainly 
competent to run their own business affairs. The American 
citizen is honest. He is just as honest as his own public 
official, and he is more competent in his own business and 
it prospers better in his own hands. 

But it is the same story in every aspect. Every step 
in the world's progress has been the struggle of the indi- 
vidual for the right of self development and initiative 
against government control. Sometimes it has been a 
struggle for the freedom of the press ; sometimes it has been 
a struggle for freedom of speech and action; sometimes it 
has been a struggle to worship God according to the 
dictates of conscience ; sometimes for the right to labor and 
engage in business pursuits. But it has always been, no 
matter what form it assumes, the same principle as Lin- 
coln said, "The struggle of the individual for the right of 
his own initiative." In America it has reached its highest 
culmination and has made us the greatest republic on earth, 
and it has made us a great republic because it has developed 
individuals competent to make democracy safe. It gave 
us a Washington and a Jefferson ; it gave us a Garfield and 



ADDRESS OF HON. E. C. STOKES 21 

a McKinley, it gave us a Roosevelt and a Wilson, (Ap- 
plause), differing in opinions and convictions^ but men each 
the free architect of his own destiny; Americans all, hon- 
ored at home and abroad ; all the product not of a populace 
government-owned, but of a government people owned, a 
government of a people and by a people of intelligence and 
character that shall not perish from the earth. 



At the close of Governor Stokes' oration a motion was 
unanimously passed thanking him for bis splendid address 
and directing that it be printed and circulated among the 
members of the Association. 

The meeting was finished by singing "Auld Lang 
Syne." 














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